Archive notice: This article was originally published on November 19, 2007. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
The social networking platform Facebook wants to enter the Chinese market. Facebook is offering around 85 million dollars to acquire the Chinese platform counterpart zhanzuo, the British daily newspaper The Times reports in its Monday edition, citing a spokeswoman for the Chinese company. Facebook thus wants to benefit from the rapid growth in China and circumvent the strict authorities. Although no contract has yet been concluded between the two companies. However, initial results are expected as early as the end of November in order to prepare the acquisition.
Facebook already records around 100,000 Chinese users on its English-language platform. Speculation surrounding a market entry gained momentum only a few weeks ago when the company registered the domain facebook.cn. The acquisition with zhanzuo.com is intended above all to prevent any problems with the Chinese authorities. Time and again in the past, Internet platforms have had to have negative experiences dealing with censorship.
Facebook is working at full speed on its ambitious expansion course, which the company announced in October. The platform is to be translated into several languages. However, it is still unclear when the first non-English-language offerings are to launch.
Meanwhile, the first enterprise application for Facebook was presented a few days ago. With the integration of its new software, software provider Alfresco enables the development of content-related applications. Companies will thus be able to control the publication of content for Facebook securely in the future.
Facebook support the use for corporate networks for years already. For example, Apple, Morgan Stanley, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Deloitte and many small companies are active on the platform. “With our new ECM-capable access to Facebook, companies can, for example, publish current news or catalog content internally and externally in order to inform all those involved, says John Newton, CTO at Alfresco Software.
